Posts tagged Kathy Hochul
OPINION: Pritzker risks bankrupting Illinois to curry favor with Big Labor
August 14, 2023 // Members of AFSCME Council 31 eagerly voted in local union meetings over the past two weeks to ratify the contract, which negotiators had tentatively agreed to on July 1. And who could blame them? The contract also includes a $1,200 “stipend” paid to every worker merely for ratifying the contract. Pritzker, a Democrat, included these bonuses in his last contract negotiation in 2019, ostensibly to compensate workers for the financial “hardship” of being state employees under his Republican predecessor, Bruce Rauner. Predictably, such payoffs have now become standard operating procedure. The governor celebrated his and AFSCME’s windfall by tweeting out, “Illinois is a pro-worker state through and through.” The pronouncement was eerily reminiscent of Biden’s one-time campaign promise to become the “most pro-union president you ever saw.”
32 Knowledge Tracker How New York’s Democratic Socialists Brought Unions Around to Public Renewables
June 20, 2023 // ince they did not initially have access to state-level union leaders, the DSA organizers started by building relationships with local utilities unions across the state. Public Power New York recruited hundreds of volunteers to help steer the victories of numerous DSA-endorsed state legislators in 2020 and 2022. One successful candidate was climate organizer Sarahana Shrestha, now a state assemblymember from the Hudson Valley. She unseated her long-tenured Democratic primary opponent, in part, by highlighting his opposition to the BPRA. The bill began to move in Albany in a real way when unions outside of the utilities sector, like the New York State United Teachers, the New York State Nurses Association, and the Service Employees International Union, endorsed the bill. Once the bill passed the state Senate in the summer of 2022, the utilities unions took a more serious interest in the plan. The BPRA’s labor provisions include prevailing-wage assurances and require that all the NYPA’s renewable projects include collective-bargaining agreements for every employee, including contractors and subcontractors. These agreements must be in place before work can start on a project. The law creates a $25 million just-transition fund to retrain fossil fuel–sector workers who could lose their jobs, and specifies that union leaders must be consulted in this process. It also prioritizes hiring these retrained workers for the NYPA’s renewable projects.
Op-ed – New York: Lawmakers pass bill banning ‘captive audience’ meetings
June 14, 2023 // “Employers have become much more aggressive in using captive audience meetings to force workers into hearing the employer’s one-sided propaganda on unionization and other issues,” Appelbaum said in a statement following the legislation’s passage. “These meetings often leave workers feeling pressured and intimidated. It is time that the law catches up to the reality of the moment by allowing workers to refuse to attend these meetings without fear of retaliation.” Three states, Connecticut, Oregon and, most recently, Minnesota have banned the meetings. After the Connecticut ban passed, a coalition of U.S companies led by the U.S Chamber of Commerce sued the state in federal court, arguing that the law is preempted by the National Labor Relations Act and that it breached employers First Amendment-protected freedom of speech.
Push in states for $20 minimum wage as inflation persists
March 30, 2023 // Cindy Lee, the owner of a bowling alley in Endicott, New York, said she’s struggling to pay off loans taken out during the pandemic that kept her business afloat. “All this cost all at once is just going to kill us. I definitely will have to cut corners somewhere with employees if wages are raised,” said Lee, adding that she’d also have to increase prices on bowling, food and liquor. The federal minimum wage in the United States has stayed at $7.25 per hour since 2009, but states and some localities are free to set higher amounts. Thirty states have chosen to do so.
NY union wants more remote work for state employees
March 17, 2023 // Spence called for New York to do more on remote work flexibility and go beyond what was proposed in Gov. Kathy Hochul’s budget for the Empire State. Hochul’s budget would not only consider more flexibility for public employees to work remotely, but it allocated over $18 million to address worker shortage issues. Yet it was not enough for Spence, who has been pushing for public employees to remain as remote workers on a long-term basis and has clashed with state lawmakers over the remote work issue during the past year. The union president asserted that New York public employees are leaving New York for other states that offer more remote work flexibility and have a lower cost-of-living. Neither PEF nor Spence outlined specifics about flexible remote work and which incentives could lead to higher retention rates of employees.
New York’s biggest labor actions of the past year
February 28, 2023 // Only one other state, Hawaii, has a unionization rate higher than New York’s 20.7%. In the public sector, just around two-thirds of New Yorkers are in a union. In 2022 alone, nearly 200 workplaces in the state filed for representation through the National Labor Relations Board. But, despite the hype and a 57-year high in Americans’ approval of labor unions, New York’s union participation (and the country’s as a whole) is still trending downward. In 2012, 23.2% of New York workers were union members, 2.5 points higher than it is today. CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies Labor Department Chair Ruth Milkman said that despite 2022’s historic union victories, many were with small firms. “So all this publicity and media attention to these iconic companies that have had some recent experience of successful unionization, it’s kind of a drop in the bucket in terms of the whole labor market in New York,” she said.
NY Gov. Hochul and teachers union at odds
February 21, 2023 // The “Pay and Resolve” bill, which would require health insurers to pay hospital billing claims immediately without reviewing the medical necessity of the billing claims, was publicly opposed by the United Federation of Teachers (UFT). The union claimed that the proposal could lead to a hike in costs for union members. UFT President Michael Mulgrew explained, “The added costs are passed along to us. That is silly and that has got to stop.” Other unions joined UFT’s opposition, such as Teamsters and SEIU Local 32 BJ. Her proposal, which is a part of the state budget proposal, would keep the current state cap of 460 charter schools but free up 85 more slots for new charter schools across the state by eliminating regional caps. The proposal would create more slots for charter schools in New York City, which currently has a cap of 275 charter schools. In a statement, Hochul said, “I believe every student deserves a quality education, and we are proposing to give New York families more options and opportunities to succeed.”
What’s in the agreement that led to the end of the New York City nurses’ strike
January 12, 2023 // Under the agreement at Montefiore, new safe staffing ratios will be implemented in the emergency department. This will come with new staffing language and financial penalties if safe staffing levels are not met in all units. Also included are a 19.1% compounded wage increase, a commitment to creating 170 new nursing positions and lifetime health coverage for eligible retired nurses.
Hospitals to Cancel Elective Procedures, Discharge ASAP as Nurse Strike Looms: Sources
January 6, 2023 // In a statement Monday, a spokesperson for Mount Sinai said that their bargaining teams "continue to make good-faith efforts to pursue a contract with NYSNA that is fair to our community and responsible with respect to the long-term financial health of our organization. Mount Sinai nurses deserve the best possible working environment, wages, and benefits, and we're tirelessly pursing these to all our employees' advantage." The statement added that the hospital system is "prepared for staffing changes, and we will do our best to ensure our patients' care is not disrupted and will do everything possible to minimize inconvenience to patients." The average salary for nurses in New York is $93,000, and $98,000 in NYC, nurses union and the GNYHA confirmed. However, there is a big disparity between nurse pay in private vs public hospitals, where salaries are almost $20,000 less.
Will offshore wind bring “good-paying, union jobs”? Texas workers aren’t so sure
October 25, 2022 // The Biden administration is gearing up to turn the Gulf of Mexico, long a hub for offshore oil and gas drilling, into a new city of skyscraping offshore wind turbines. Opening up the Gulf to wind development is part of President Joe Biden's goal to employ "tens of thousands of workers" to establish 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030. But in Texas, workers are worried that the new industry will continue the low-wage, unsafe, exploitative conditions that pervade the construction and offshore oil industries there. For the past year, a coalition of Texas labor unions, along with their allies in Congress and in the environmental movement, have been lobbying the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, or BOEM, to make sure that doesn't happen.